When I bought my computer I had no intention of gaming. It was a mid-to-low spec machine for Office tasks and internet browsing. One Christmas I was longing for the aviation experience I could no longer afford to do in the Real World so I plunked out $30 for FSX.

 

Well of course now I'm hooked. I don't have the $$ for a better spec machine so that is out of the question. I am looking for advice on cost-effective upgrades to the existing machine.

 

I have tried to implement *******' tweaks but I'm not sure I did it correctly. I can get a fairly consistent 30fps with a good payware aircraft (like BroncoX ) at 200 Kias over light-urban to suburban photoscenery at 1000AGL. The nearest scenery just off the wingtip seems blurred and I can see distant scenery painting itself in.

• Would a better video card ($60-100) improve performance significantly? (I have a 350W powersupply)
  
• I have a copy of Win7 Pro 32bit that came w/ my computer but I was skeptical of a new OS at the time and stayed with XP Pro. Even though I don't relish the thought of changing over would Win 7 help FSX performance
  
• any other low cost suggestions ??
  

system specs:

• Processor
  Intel Core2 Duo
  
• Processor Cores
  CPU E7500
  
• Processor Speed
  2.93
  
• 4.0 (3)g RAM
  
• ATI Radeon HD 4300
  
• Seagate Hard Drive
  
• 21.5" Dell Monitor
  

Thanks in advance.

 

Slim

Hi Slim'

 

I can see from the photo that your HDD is not feeding your CPU with textures fast enough!

Consider using a SSD or Velociraptors or Velociraptors in RAID 0 (stripe size 128KB).

Your CPU / memory are OK for photo scenery

 

HLJAMES

Hi James,

 

I neglected to mention the Addon Scenery is fed from a USB My Passport 500gb external drive. I guess it's not fast enough. Graphics were not noticeably better coming from the Seagate C drive.

 

I'm more of a mechanic than computer guy so bear with me. I could probably physically install another hard drive no problem. There's plenty of room in the case and I see the SATA connections and what looks like extra power taps coming out of the power supply.

 

I see you used the plural "Velociraptors." Does that imply the need for more than one to gain better graphics loading? Do I need some type of RAID card to make the multiple drives function properly or would one Velociraptor be a visible improvement?

 

Thanks for help.

 

Slim

Your Mainboard, is it an OEM (Dell, HP) or an enthusiast (asus, Gigabyte)

 

HLJAMES

Your Mainboard, is it an OEM (Dell, HP) or an enthusiast (asus, Gigabyte)

 

HLJAMES

 

I guess it's OEM I haven't hot-rodded it. What entry would it be in Device Manager?

 

FWIW I do see a JMicron JMB36X RAID and SCSI controller.

 

Slim

Yeah this means that your Seagate is connected to the JMicron controller and the driver is installed in the OS. Also the SATA connector beside where the Seagate is plugged into is also JMicron.

 

One option you have here is to get a Velociraptor and move the photo scenery files to it and test for loading textures. You will need to delete the scenery from the scenery library then redirect the scenery library to the new location.

 

When the board has two HDD there is a simple test for RAID functionality: boot into the BIOS and change the SATA configuration fron IDE to RAID save and exit BIOS. If RAID is functional it will immediately boot into the JMicron RAID Setup Utility.If there is no RAID functionality it will boot into windows OS.

 

If RAID is functional you have more options. You can get a second Velociraptor, the JMicronSATA RAID driver for windows XP,and a Floppy disk drive (a RAID driver can only be installed in XP with a floppy).

 

During the instellation of XP a run/stop will occur instructing you to press F6. This is where you insert the floppy and the instellation reads the driver.

 

The other option would be to run two Seagate drives in RAID.

 

 

HLJAMES

Thanks for your patience HL.

 

"You will need to delete the scenery from the scenery library then redirect the scenery library to the new location." I still have a copy of the addon scenery library folder on my C drive even though all the Addon Scenery in FSX is accessed from the My Passport external drive. Could the folder on the C drive slow down the loading of scenery textures from the My Passport in any way? Should I delete these from the C drive? Is the USB connection on the My Passport drive the bottleneck?

 

"boot into the BIOS and change the SATA configuration fronm IDE ( Actually it was AHCI.) to RAID save and exit BIOS" I did this and my computer did not boot into the RAID setup utility so I can guess we have no RAID functionality present.

 

"One option you have here is to get a Velociraptor and move the photo scenery files to it and test for loading textures. " I wish now I had put the $70 I spent on the Passport to the Velociraptor instead. Is it a given that a single Velociraptor with it's higher speed would improve my blurries? If so does the drive capacity matter? I currently have 33gb of Addon Scenery and it's growing each day. I want to get PNW from Orbx when I can afford. it. Is there a BIOS change necessary if the Velociraptor is installed or does the installation do it automatically?

 

"insert the floppy and the installation reads the driver." Glad this isn't necessary as I don't have a floppy drive anymore.

 

Slim

Do not use motherboard RAID for FSX - contrary to expectations it will not give you better performance, in fact it might even give you worse performance. A dedicated RAID controller using a 256K or greater stripe will work fine. Software (motherboard) RAID will not work.

 

Vic

It would be interesting to take HD Tune (free) and measure the Read avg speed on the Passport and also the Seagate, I also use HD Tune:

 

Caviar Black 1TB X2 intel RAID0 160 MB/s avg.

 

Velociraptor 1TB single 175 MB/s avg.

 

Velociraptor 1TB X2 intel RAID0 319 MB/s avg.

 

Velociraptor 600GB X3 intel RAID0 350 MB/s avg.

 

ORBX PNW….This is not photo scenery, its autogen. Fortunately it comes with a suggested configuration for city and rural areas. My experience is that when you follow their slider advice it works flawlessly.

 

Hi Vic,

 

Im not able to verify any performance impact from software, hardware, SAS RAID0. There are test results In the FSXMark11 datasheet.

 

 

HLJAMES

Check this out:

HD Tune: ST3250318AS Benchmark

 

Transfer Rate Minimum : 1.8 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 122.6 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 46.6 MB/sec

Access Time : 23.8 ms

Burst Rate : 5.2 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 3.2%

 

 

HD Tune: WD My Passport 0748 Benchmark

 

Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.5 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 33.2 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 6.6 MB/sec

Access Time :

Burst Rate :

CPU Usage : 52.0%

 

It looks like the USB Passport is a bottleneck if I've interpreted it correctly. So if I had one Velociraptor basically dedicated to FSX scenery would that cure my "blurries"?? Since cost is a factor would a small 150gb 'raptor be sufficient?

 

Slim

I just ran HD Tune with FSX up w/ photoscenery and Van Nuys airport up in the San Fernando Valley with an FSX limit of 30fps. All the Addon Scenery was coming from the Seagate C drive.

Here's the results :

 

HD Tune: ST3250318AS Benchmark

 

Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.1 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 115.3 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 18.7 MB/sec

Access Time : 26.4 ms

Burst Rate : 8.0 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 97.0%

 

Much better than the Passport.

Van Nuys Airport

Yep that's my home field. Know it well. I've currently got John Loney's scenery installed over BlueSky's photoscenery. What are you using?? Aerosoft is supposedly working on a VNY and they are definitely working on a Los Angeles for their US Cities X.

 

Do you think a single Velociraptor is worth doing??

 

Slim

To help with the blurries in your case you need a faster HDD to start with. A single velociraptor will be more than enough for you. There is no need to have 2 in raid. It's mainly the Access time that is important and a single velociraptor will provide that.

Once you have faster storage in place you can improve your texture loading by getting a quad core. But we don't know what quad cores your motherboard support and it's also costing a bit of money.

You definitely must not run heavy scenery from a slow drive (USB external = yuck). Vrap, SSD, even a fast 7200rpm black from WD is enough.